F N SOUZA (1924 - 2002)

Property from the family collection of eminent art critic K.B. Goel (1930 - 2018), who was a great friend of the artist

Souza, in the West, turned a sexual voyeurist. It promised him not only liberation from his colonial self but also a ready market. Moreover, it was part of the expressionist ethos: lacking in any erotic tradition, the Western painter goes orgiastic with colour and in the process becomes the victim of sexual parasitism. Souza acts out the emotions associated with the worship of female fetish: female parts are exteriorized, breasts are the ‘desirable fruits’ and there is no sin committed in devouring these. His female images, rich in form, are as empty mirrors; they are born out of inner necessity.
In the context of the ideology of the suffering flesh, Souza’s sexual voyeurism has the touch of condescension. Sex is an escape from a time-structured consciousness: like Joyce who embraced the modern spirit which he described as returned medievalism, Souza goes medieval with Khajuraho as his Ireland, of which the landscape is the pleasure garden.
– K.B. Goel in The Economic Times, New Delhi, 26 August 1990
These depictions, admittedly amongst the finest chemical alterations done by Souza, were done on glossy papers of erotic magazines and each of the images on the reverse might in itself have served as the inspiration for the defacement.